Snap Clone using EMC SAN and ASM

By Pete Sharman

Recently we announced the latest update to Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 4.  One of the enhancements in that release is support for Snap Clone on Automatic Storage Management (ASM) and EMC Storage. Before we examine the details of this specific enhancement, let's look at a quick refresher on what Snap Clone provides for you.

What is Snap Clone?

Snap Clone is a storage agnostic and self service approach to creating rapid and space efficient clones of large databases (and by large, we’re talking terabytes or more). Now that’s probably more buzz words in one sentence than anyone’s brain can deal with without exploding, so let’s explain some of those terms more:

• Storage agnostic – by that I mean Snap Clone supports all storage vendors, both NAS and SAN. It can leverage storage layer APIs or layer a ZFS filesystem on top to provide copy on write.
• Self service – in the XaaS world – where X can be any of I, MW, P and DB  – one of the key features is empowering the end user to do the work, rather than waiting on some techie to find time in their otherwise busy schedules. So it’s the end user who makes the adhoc clones here, not the storage admin
• Rapid – People simply don’t have the time to wait weeks for provisioning to happen any more, so you have to support the functionality to clone databases in minutes rather than the days or weeks things used to take.
• Space efficient – When you’re working with terabyte or larger databases, you simply may not have the storage to create full-sized clones, so you have to significantly reduce the storage footprint to start with.

Over the various EM releases,  more and more functionality has been added to Snap Clone:

• EM12cR2 provided Snap Clone for NAS storage (NetApp and Sun ZFSSA).  It provided RMAN backup based clones, and included the Snap Clone Analyzer to show you the storage savings you could make using Snap Clone
• EM12cR3 added in support for Snap Clone using the Solaris File System (ZFS) and admin flows for Snap Clone for PDB’s (pluggable databases)
• EM12cR4 added a lot more:
• Snap Clone using CloneDB – this is the biggie, as it means Snap Clone can now be used with ANY Oracle database release that supports CloneDB, regardless of what storage it’s on
• Data Guard standby as a test master – allows offloading the impact of creating the test master from your Production environment
• NetApp Ontap 8.x cluster mode support
• Certification for engineered systems, with I/O over Infiniband
• Support for NFSv4
• And in the latest plugin update that's just been shipped, we added:
• Integrated data lifecycle management
• Snap Clone using EMC SAN and ASM
• Admin flows for test master creation
• Integration with masking, patching, upgrades etc.

Snap Clone using EMC SAN and ASM

Most NAS technologies offer storage efficient clones in the form of Snapshots. The snapshots make use of underlying volumes, knows as flexvols (Netapp) or shares (ZFS). Unfortunately, SAN storage does not provide native snapshotting capability unless a file is created on it by leveraging TCP/IP over iSCSI over Ethernet. However this defeats the purpose of having high speed fiber channel fabric, not to mention that it makes little sense to overlay SAN with a filesystem. Another complaint we heard from our customers is that cloning is a data intensive operation that could flood the corporate IT backbone if Ethernet is used. Consequently, lot of our customers want native support for SAN for cloning purposes, especially, the ones who run ASM on SAN. And they are quite a lot in number.

Using Snap Clone on ASM and EMC storage provides the ability to create ‘live’ thin clones of databases that are on ASM. A live clone is NOT snapshot based but rather a live copy of the database, residing on copy-on-write storage technology, that can be within the same cluster or indeed another one. Both single instance and RAC are supported – supported versions are 10.2.0.5 or higher of the database, 11.2 and higher of the Grid Infrastructure code. This functionality works on both EMC VMAX (with Time Finder VPSnap) and VNX storage appliances.

Diagrammatically, the configuration looks like this:

Why Use Snap Clone with EMC SAN and ASM

There are a number of major challenges that Snap Clone can be used to address:

1. Lack of automation - Manual tasks such as provisioning and cloning of new databases (for example, for test or development systems) is one area that many DBA’s complain is too time consuming. It can take days to weeks, often because of the need to coordinate the involvement of different groups, as shown in the image below:

When an end user, be it a developer or a QA engineer, needs a database he or she typically has to go through an approval process like this, which then translates into a series of tasks for the DBA, the sysadmin and storage admin. The sysadmin has to provide the compute capacity while the storage admin has to provide the space on a filer. Finally, the DBA would install the bits, create the database (optionally on Real Application Clusters), and deliver that to the user. Clearly, this is a cumbersome and time-consuming process that needs to be improved on.


2. Database unfriendly solutions – Obviously, when there is a need looking for a solution, different people take different approaches to solving that need. There are a variety of point solutions and storage solutions out there, but the vast bulk of them are not database aware. They tend to clone storage volumes rather than databases and have no visibility into the database stack, which of course makes it hard to triage performance issues as a DBA. They also lack the ability to track configuration, compliance and data security issues, as well as having limited or no lifecycle capabilities. As mentioned before, DBAs would like to leverage the native FDDI protocol of SAN for cloning.  This will make cloning fast and efficient without disrupting regular network traffic.
3. Storage issues and archaic processes – Of course, one of the main issues is storage. Data volumes are ever increasing, particularly in these Big Data days, and the growth can often outpace your storage capacity. You can throw more disks at the problem, but it never seems to be enough, and you can end up with degraded performance if you take the route of sharing clones between users. There can also be different processes and different priorities between the storage team and the DBA team, and you may still have fixed refresh cycles, making it difficult to clone on an adhoc basis.

So the end result of all of this is that far too often, there are competing priorities at odds. Users want flexibility – simplified self service access, rapid cloning, and the ability to revert data changes. IT, on the other hand, want standardization and control, which allows a reduction in storage use, reduction in administrative overhead, visibility into the complete database stack and lineage tracking.  

Snap Clone on EMC storage helps you to address all these competing priorities, using hardware you may already own.  Indeed, EMC is well established as an Oracle database storage vendor over many years, and that integration has become tighter and tighter over the past few years.  In addition to that, the actual setup and configuration can be simpler than is the case when using other hardware, as you do not need to create Database Profiles in this configuration.  Service Templates are created directly on either a single instance or RAC database that resides on ASM.  Because you're using this combination of ASM and EMC SAN storage, the database is already Snap Clone enabled as it resides on copy-on-write storage technology.

In my next post, I'll discuss more details of what else is new in the Snap Clone product in this latest release, so stay tuned for more details on that soon!

For More Information

You can see more details on how you actually set Snap Clone up on EMC storage by viewing the following screenwatches:

• Clone Databases in Minutes Using Snap Clone Self Service Portal with EMC Storage + ASM
• Register EMC Storage for Enterprise Manager Snap Clone

For more details on using Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c to provide Database as a Service functionality, visit the OTN page located here.

Blog Entry written by Pete Sharman.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part VI

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog post on this topic, we looked at setting up Data Guard standbys in Enterprise Manager 12c.

Let us look into the Administration of Database Users in Enterprise Manager, and specifically the changes for Database 12c.

Selecting Administration..Security..Users from the 12c Database Target menu of Enterprise Manager, this is now Database 12c aware, and allows you to select either the CDB or any of the PDBs as seen in the screenshot below.

If the CDB$ROOT is selected from this dropdown box, then you are able to create a “Common User”.

This is a new concept in Database 12c and the user name in this case for a user created common user must start with a “C##” (uppercase or lowercase) prefix.

As can be seen from the screenshot, the Enterprise Manager interface can be used to create a new user, grant roles and/or system privileges and/or object privileges to it, assign a quota to the new user, assign consumer group privileges (for the database resource manager) to the user, create proxy users for this new user, and also control the Container level data access for the user. Quite a few things that can be set up very easily in this interface, to assist the DBA with user administration.

Note the “Execute on Multiple  Databases” button. You can click on this to create the same user on any number of database targets that you select, provided you have the required credentials to create a user on those databases. This capability of Enterprise Manager makes it very easy to create a new user, say a test user, on tens of test databases at one shot - without logging in to each database and running the same create command on each; along with the SQL for the various grants and other details you fill up on the various tabs. This is Enterprise Manager’s concept of “Manage Many as One”.

You can also click on “Show SQL” to display the SQL that is generated by your input. When you click on the OK button, this SQL will be executed immediately, and the user created.

The concept of a Common User is covered in detail in the documentation here, if you are interested in reading further on this Database 12c feature. 

In the next blog post, we will look at setting up Data Redaction in Enterprise Manager 12c. This will be another interesting topic.

This blog post was originally posted at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part V

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In my previous blog post on this topic, we looked at setting up and scheduling RMAN full or incremental backups of single or multiple PDBs, or the entire CDB via Enterprise Manager.

As the savvy DBA would know, Enterprise Manager also helps a lot in setting up Oracle Data Guard Standby Databases. Rather than do things the manual way and create a standby database by going through all the manual steps, it makes sense to use a powerful wizard to set up a standby database.  There are fewer errors, and it is a lot faster this way since you don’t miss out any step.

As a bit of personal history, I started using standby database archive log transport and apply hand-written scripts in Oracle 7, and the more automated Oracle Data Guard in Oracle 8i where to my recollection we had the first dgmgrl – command line interface for Data Guard.

When Enterprise Manager 9i came out, I immediately experimented with using Enterprise Manager to set up Data Guard standby databases, and was pleasantly surprised with the ease of use, and the saving of time. There was no more need to write scripts. Once Enterprise Manager 10g was released, the set up and management of Data Guard became easier and streamlined, and I continued its use for production databases in the corporate I was working for. I have never looked back, or regretted having done so.

And now, for the newest version of the Oracle Database - 12c, you can do the same. As can be seen by the screenshot below, when adding a standby database (via Availability..Add Standby Database from the Database Target menu), the standby database wizard does not continue unless all the Pluggable databases are open. The wizard is obviously now CDB and PDB aware and can create a Standby Database from a CDB. (Note that standbys can only be created at the CDB level.)

Oracle Database 12c has a new kind of standby known as Far Sync. An Oracle Data Guard Far Sync instance is actually a remote Oracle Data Guard destination that accepts redo from the primary database. The redo is then shipped to other members of the Oracle Data Guard configuration.

 A Far Sync instance has a control file, receives redo into standby redo logs, and also archives those logs to local archived redo logs. However, a Far Sync instance does not have user data files. As such it cannot be opened for access, cannot run redo apply, and can never become a primary database or even any type of standby database.

Far Sync instances are part of the Oracle Active Data Guard Far Sync feature, which requires an Oracle Active Data Guard license.  But as it turns out, creation of Far Sync instances is not currently supported in Enterprise Manager 12c. However, externally created Far Sync instances will show up on the Data Guard Administration page.

No worries. Even if Far Sync cannot be set up using Enterprise Manager, note that Normal Data Guard, Active Data Guard, and Snapshot Standbys can still be set up. For a detailed technical explanation on setting up Oracle Data Guard using Enterprise Manager, please refer to one of my well-read OTN articles “Set Up and Manage Oracle Data Guard using Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c”.

This blog post was originally posted at this link.

Managing Oracle Database 12c with Enterprise Manager – Part IV

We are discussing the management of Oracle Database 12c in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. In our previous blog posts on this topic, we looked at provisioning 12c Pluggable Databases (PDBs) in a Container Database (CDB) using Enterprise Manager.

As many DBAs are coming to realize, Oracle RMAN backups can be easily set up and scheduled for multiple Oracle databases in Enterprise Manager, it’s all about saving time and effort. Well, now the RMAN wizards in Enterprise Manager can work with Database 12c CDBs and PDBs too.

Move to the Database 12c Target Home Page in Enterprise Manager, and select Availability.. Backup and Recovery.. Schedule Backup from the Database target menu. The following page appears. 

On this Schedule Backup page, you can select either the Whole Database, or the Container Database Root, or the Pluggable Databases to be backed up in an RMAN backup when a Customized Backup is being scheduled.

Here we have selected only two PDBs to be backed up in this Customized Backup.

We can perform either a full backup, or an incremental backup of the selected PDBs.

The RMAN script generated shows the pluggable database backup command. This shows how RMAN also understands the concept of Database 12c CDBs and PDBs.

If this blog post has perked your interest in how Enterprise Manager can help you to set up and schedule RMAN backups for your Oracle databases, then you can study my detailed Oracle Technical Network (OTN) technical article on this topic “Back Up a Thousand Databases Using Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c”.

This is a very powerful ability indeed, from my own experience as a Senior DBA in the 1990s and 2000s, having set up RMAN backups both with and without Enterprise Manager. I saved a lot of time and effort doing it the Enterprise Manager way.

In the next blog post, we will look at more Database 12c aware features in Enterprise Manager 12c.

This blog post was originally posted at this link.